Legal Education in Developing Countries: Daring to Play the Long Game
Abstract:
This paper argues that given what we know about the role of law and legal institutions at early stages of development and what we know about the difficulties in creating or reforming public institutions, legal education is one of the most cost-effective areas in which to invest rule of law assistance. We know enough about the rough sequencing of law and legal institutions at early stages of development to avoid big and stupid mistakes. We also know enough about the significant challenges in building credible public institutions generally, and legal institutions specifically, to suggest that all-in funding of the building of formal legal institutions at early stages of development is imprudent. Therefore, in light of what we know about sequencing and the challenges of creating or reforming public institutions, legal education competes well compared with other potential rule of law interventions as a prudent and effective investment at earlier stages of development and beyond.
Speaker Bio:
Jensen lived for 14 years in Asia and was an active participant in policy dialogues in South and Southeast Asia. From 1996 to 1998, he led the governance section of an Asian Development Bank-funded study called "Pakistan 2010," which examined subjects including judicial and legal reform, countering corruption, governance process, civil service reform, decentralization and empowering the country's citizenry. In September 1999, he served as co-team leader of a 35-member consulting team which prepared an extensive report on "Legal and Judicial Reform in Pakistan" for the Asian Development Bank.
Jensen's recent past activities include: completing a research project funded by the Ford Foundation that surveys Pakistani and Indian perceptions of doing business across their acrimonious border; serving as an outside expert in an evaluation of a World Bank project on judicial reform in Venezuela; designing and teaching a research workshop, at Stanford Law School, on judicial reform in developing countries; and serving on the advisory board of two international rule-of-law projects for the World Bank in Mexico and Argentina.
Among his recent publications are "Confronting Misconceptions and Acknowledging Imperfections: A Response To Khaled Abou El Fadl's 'Islam And Democracy'" published in the Fordham International Law Review (2003), and Beyond Common Knowledge: Empirical Approaches to the Rule of Law (Stanford University Press, 2003), which he edited with Thomas C. Heller. Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz endorsed Beyond Common Knowledge with the admonition, "No scholar or policymaker should utter the words 'rule of law' without first reading this volume."
Jensen holds a JD degree from the William Mitchell College of Law and an LLM degree from the London School of Economics.
Erik Jensen
CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C144
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Erik Jensen holds joint appointments at Stanford Law School and Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. He is Lecturer in Law, Director of the Rule of Law Program at Stanford Law School, an Affiliated Core Faculty at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and Senior Advisor for Governance and Law at The Asia Foundation. Jensen began his international career as a Fulbright Scholar. He has taught and practiced in the field of law and development for 35 years and has carried out fieldwork in approximately 40 developing countries. He lived in Asia for 14 years. He has led or advised research teams on governance and the rule of law at the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the African Development Bank. Among his numerous publications, Jensen co-edited with Thomas Heller Beyond Common Knowledge: Empirical Approaches to the Rule of Law (Stanford University Press: 2003).
At Stanford, he teaches courses related to state building, development, global poverty and the rule of law. Jensen’s scholarship and fieldwork focuses on bridging theory and practice, and examines connections between law, economy, politics and society. Much of his teaching focuses on experiential learning. In recent years, he has committed considerable effort as faculty director to three student driven projects: the Afghanistan Legal Education Project (ALEP) which started and has developed a law degree-granting programs at the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF), an institution where he also sits on the Board of Trustees; the Iraq Legal Education Initiative at the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani (AUIS); and the Rwanda Law and Development Project at the University of Rwanda. He has also directed projects in Bhutan, Cambodia and Timor Leste. With Paul Brest, he is co-leading the Rule of Non-Law Project, a research project launched in 2015 and funded by the Global Development and Poverty Fund at the Stanford King Center on Global Development. The project examines the use of various work-arounds to the formal legal system by economic actors in developing countries. Eight law faculty members as well as scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute are participating in the Rule of Non-Law Project.
Thomas Blom Hansen (Moderator/Speaker) is the Reliance-Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University. He is also the director of the Center for South Asia at Stanford. He has worked extensively on Hindu-Muslim relations, communal violence and the rise of Hindu nationalism in India. His books include The Saffron Wave. Hindu Nationalism and Democracy in Modern India (Princeton University Press 1999) and Wages of Violence, Naming and identity in postcolonial Bombay (Princeton University Press 2001).
Harish S. Wankhede (Speaker) research interest is to imagine theoretical spaces by interconnecting certain approaches and themes of social science mainly, Justice, politics of recognition and redistribution, secularism, nationalism and the Caste identity. The emphasis of his work is on the marginalized communities in India especially the Muslims, Dalits and the Tribals.
Alexander Lee (Speaker) is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. In the fall of 2014 he will be an assistant professor of political science at the University of Rochester. His research focuses on the historical factors governing the success or failure of political institutions, particularly in South Asia and other areas of the developing world. His work has been published in World Politics and the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. Alex earned his PhD from Stanford in 2013. More information on his work can be found on his 
